初冬時候 The Onset of Winter
次早，悟空起來，請師父走路。三藏著衣，教行者收拾鋪蓋行李。正欲告辭，只見那老兒早具臉湯，又具齋飯。齋罷，方才起身。三藏上馬，行者引路。不覺饑餐渴飲，夜宿曉行。又值初冬時候，但見那：次早，悟空起来，请师父走路。三藏着衣，教行者收拾铺盖行李。正欲告辞，只见那老儿早具脸汤，又具斋饭。斋罢，方才起身。三藏上马，行者引路。不觉饥餐渴饮，夜宿晓行。又值初冬时候，但见那：
逐句解 Line by line
Early next day Wukong rose and asked his master to take the road. Sanzang put on his robes and bade the Pilgrim gather up the bedding and baggage.
A brisk, orderly morning: the disciple up first, the master dressed, the bedding rolled. 著衣, to put clothes on, reads 著 as zhuó, 'to don' — a different job for the same character that marked ongoing action a page ago. 教行者收拾 reads 教 as jiào.
Just as they were about to take their leave, the old fellow had already prepared water for washing, and a vegetarian meal besides; and when the meal was done, only then did they set out.
They try to leave and are fed first: washing water and another meal already waiting. The old man gets the last word in hospitality. 那 reads nà.
Sanzang mounted, and the Pilgrim led the way. Before they knew it they were eating when hungry and drinking when thirsty, resting by night and travelling by dawn; and it fell to be the season of early winter. And this was the sight:
饑餐渴飲，夜宿曉行 — eat when hungry, drink when thirsty, sleep at night, travel at dawn. Eight characters, and weeks of road have gone by; the formula is the novel's standard way of skipping the uneventful days, and it is why a hundred chapters can cover fourteen years. Then the season has changed, and 但見那 cues the verse that paints it. 三藏 reads 藏 as zàng.
Frost has withered the red leaves, and a thousand groves grow lean; on the ridge a few pines and cypresses stand fair and green.
The lyric opens on the turning year: frost-stripped leaves, whole woods gone thin. Then a few pines and cypresses still green on the ridge — the standing emblem in Chinese verse for what holds out when everything else gives up.
Plum-buds, not yet open, breathe a faint, hidden fragrance; the warm days are short, the little-spring season come; chrysanthemums are spent and the lotus gone, yet the camellia thrives; by the cold bridge the old trees vie, branch striving against branch.
The season is named exactly. 小春, 'little spring', is the mild spell that falls in the tenth lunar month, what English calls an Indian summer — winter's false start. Its contradictions fill the line: plum buds not yet open and camellia in flower, against spent chrysanthemum and finished lotus. 散, 'to spread', is read sàn; 荷盡 reads 盡 as jìn.
Down the winding gully the spring-water trickles and slides; pale clouds, on the verge of snow, drift across the whole sky.
The middle couplet takes the low ground and the high in one movement: the gully-spring still trickling below, the snow-heavy clouds above. The whole scene is held at the moment before the first fall.
The north wind gusts and tugs at the sleeves; as evening draws on, the cold's fierce might — how is a man to bear it?
And it ends on the wind and a question. How is a man to bear this? — which is not decoration, since the men in question are about to spend the night outdoors on that road.
A second seasonal lyric moves the clock on and turns the year toward winter. After the warmth of the Chen household the travellers set out again, and the compressed formula for many days on the road — hungry and fed, night and dawn — delivers them into the cold season, which the verse then paints.
The 詞 is precise about which moment it has caught: 小春, the little spring of the tenth month, a stretch of deceptive mildness inside the oncoming winter. Its images set survival against decay — evergreen pine, early plum, camellia on one side; stripped woods, spent chrysanthemum, dead lotus on the other — before closing on a north wind and the question of how anyone is to endure it.
The turn to cold and exposure is not scene-painting for its own sake. It sets the temperature for what happens next: on this wintry, empty road the Six Robbers jump out, and the chapter's second half — the testing of Wukong's freshly promised restraint — begins.